09/12/2025
Is AI Enhancing Children's Minds- or Compromising Them Before They're Fully Formed?
New on The Handshake - Pilar Quezzaire, Education Futurist, Curriculum Designer with global outreach, IB Offices, The Hague, Holland.
When GPT went from non-existent to ubiquitous in education in just 18 months, curriculum frameworks designed for 5–10 year cycles became instantly obsolete. So what happens to children caught in this whiplash?
In this episode, I sit down with Pilar Quezzaire, Educational Futurist at the International Baccalaureate and curriculum designer who's wrestling with questions most educators haven't yet dared to ask.
We tackle the hard truths:
When AI removes cognitive struggle from learning, are we optimising short-term performance at the cost of long-term intellectual capacity?
Primary children interact with AI daily - yet literacy efforts focus on secondary. Are we missing critical developmental windows?
If AI delivers content, feedback, and even Socratic dialogue — what exactly is a teacher now?
Drawing on Vygotsky, Björk's desirable difficulties research, and Zuboff's surveillance capitalism warnings, this conversation doesn't offer comfortable answers.
Because perhaps there aren't any.
🎧 Listen now: https://youtu.be/Ps2ZJfOdZoQ
